The first mp3 here is a spacious Piano improvisation.
It has later been used in an exercise to learn how this sequencer works. Cutting and pasting and a little bit of volume automation. Working on extension, pulse and repetition.
I have been extremely inactive in this circle over recent months as I have also slipped into being inactive in music again. But today is the first day of a change in pace [for 2 weeks anyway]. I am currently typing with one hand as I have a six week old kitten [1 of 5] being entertained by the other to stop it from jumping on my laptop. [the cat consequently named this track]. I am house sitting in Dorchester for a couple of weeks and plan much more time for music, practice and rest. A little work, no extractions; tv etc, and little chance of socializing.
So day one on this break and a first offering to the circle. And my first attempts with Apple Logic – I installed before I left home. I haven’t looked into learning how it works yet; i just opened it, added a track and pressed record. It seemed to work without me even looking at the setup so I decided to simply record a piece.
This is an improvisation of three instruments. I have first recorded a Piano track, then while listening to it back, recorded a percussion track, then a guitar track. Each track recorded with the laptop’s mic, then without adjustment, exported using the ‘bounce’ button. At this level – very simple. The drums are Steve’s lovely kit played delicately with my hands. The guitar is an archtop electric without amplification. The Piano is the front room’s upright.
The layered improvisations started with the enjoyment of holding chords on the piano until the sounds died to nothing. A comment I read a few years back has repeated in my thoughts while considering the properties of different instruments and how you naturally work with them as a player: The idea was that the guitar is a blues instrument because the notes die out so quickly. It is tragic.
Help me by giving me some software advice. I would like to start writing some electronic scores. I don’t wish to make loop based music and so am imagining some software with an interface laid out similar to manuscript paper; with a continuing horizontal timeline and vertical pitches. I remember that my early version of Cubase had a midi score which sounded like this but i never used it.
I wish to write pitches, controlling volumes and durations and whatever else possible. I presume the way to do this is with midi, triggering instruments.
Could someone give me advice on what software is best for this purpose. I’m not scared of learning new methods.
Thanks
The original plan was to remix Radiohead’s Nude by sampling a number of loops that would become repeating bar-long segments of the original track. This was undertaken as a way to experiment with the previously stated concept of repeating phrases that expand and evolve. I am trying to practice exercises of such on the guitar, while also attempting experiments with sampled sounds: The hope being that this will capture or incite new sounds or ideas outside of my own contrivance.
The work above is the result of scrapping the original plan in favour of concentrating on two of the segments; instead of shifting between different samples, I have played with shifting the tempo.
A couple of weeks ago I downloaded a mp3 dj program which I couldn’t get to work well. So I found the freeware sequencer Audacity and tried making some mixes and crossovers between songs more manually. I took a couple of samples from a Love song and put it to an Edan track, which then stabs in and crosses over into a Jimmy Edgar track (like this). I then took a Prince song and clumsily applied a harder beat behind it from a Peaches song. The track introduces the guitars from the Peaches song too, and then crosses into that song entirely (like this).
Following this interest in layering other peoples music, I started taking little loop samples from various artists. Here I multitracked the samples, looping each one individually so they all have their own loop duration and so are always alining differently. The piece isn’t composed further than this; all the loops start together and repeat for the duration of the piece. The only reason for continuing the work longer than one cycle is that the elements play against each other in different ways. [you are hearing Nick Cave, Bjork, Miles Davis and Bob Dylan]. I tried this layering again with a single sample. It is repeated over itself with the starting points offset by one beat. It is done so many times at the start that the sound is overloaded out of recognition. As versions are allowed to end their loops, one by one, the original sample reveals more and more of its intended sounds, and you can hear Eski telling us who he is.
I read one guitarist explaining that the guitar is so often associated with blues or sombre musics because as soon as each note is struck it dies out; short lives revealing death. Playing with my new freeware software, I wanted to experiment with playing guitar notes and then looping small sections of the recorded form so that the life of that note could be extended electronically before continuing its path out of volume. The following mp3 is constructed of a recording of a single guitar chord. I edited various copies of it, looping small repetitions of its waves, for various durations. I arranged them in the sequencer to see how they sounded together, in sequence, on top of each other. Here there are 4 versions of the extended chord. They are arranged upon a repeating drum loop. This loop is stolen from Eoin’s last post, recorded very badly, noise gated because it was so distorted, then simplified by removing a few hits. [sorry Eoin].
